John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (54 page)

To those who do not studiously distinguish circumstances or do not see the doer’s conscience and the testimony of God’s spirit, some of those acts of ours may at first taste have some of the brackishness of sin. So it was with Moses’ killing of the Egyptians (Exod. 12:12), for which there appears no special calling from God. Because this does not happen often, Saint Paul would not embolden us to do any of those things that are customarily reputed to be evil.

If others are delighted with the more ordinary interpretation of this text, that it speaks of everything we call sin, I will not reject that interpretation, provided they do not make the apostle’s rule (although in this text it is not properly and exactly given as a rule) more strict than the moral precepts of the Decalogue itself, in which, as in all rules, there are naturally included and incorporated some exceptions. If they allow exceptions to this one, they are still at the beginning, for the case of self-homicide may itself fall within those exceptions.

Otherwise, the general application of this rule is improper. As from infinite other texts it appears evident from the passage in Bellarmine where he says that by reason of this rule a man may not adorn a church by neglecting a poor neighbor. Still, there are a great many cases in which we may neglect this poor neighbor, and therefore to do so is not naturally evil. Surely whoever is delighted with such arguments and such an application of this text would not only have called to Lot’s attention this rule when (Gen. 19:6-8) he offered his daughters (for there it might have color), but also would have joined with Judas when the woman anointed Christ (Mark 14:3-11, John 12:3-7) and would have told her that although the office that she did was good yet the waste that she first made was evil and against this rule.

4. The same apostle in various other texts uses this phrase, “We are the temples of the Holy Ghost.” From this it is argued that to demolish or to deface those temples is an unlawful sacrifice. But we are the temples of God in the same way that we are his images; that is, by his residing in our hearts. Who may doubt that the blessed souls of the departed are still his temples and images? Even among heathens those temples that were consecrated to their gods might be demolished in cases of public good or harm, and still the ground remained sacred.

In the first two texts (II Cor. 6:16 and I Cor. 3:16) there is only an exhortation against polluting our hearts, which are God’s temples, with idolatry or other sin. In the other text (I Cor. 6:16) he calls our material body the temple, and he makes it an argument to us that we should flee from fornication, because therein we trespass against our own body. There arises here a double argument, that we may not do injury to our own bodies either as it is our own or as it is God’s.

In the first of these he says, “A fornicator sins against his body,” for, as he said two verses before, “He makes himself one body with a harlot,” and thus he diminishes the dignity of his own person. But is this so in our case?—when he withdraws and purges his body from all corruptions and delivers it from all the pollutions, venom, and malign machinations of his (and God’s) adversaries and prepares it by God’s inspiration and concurrence for the glory that, without death, cannot be attained!

Is it a lesser dignity that one be the priest of God or the sacrifice of God than that one be the temple of God? Says Paul, “Your body is the temple of God, and you are not your own” (I Cor. 6:19). But Calvin on this point says that you are not your own in that you may live according to your own will or abuse your body with pollutions and uncleanness. Our body is so much our own that we may use it to God’s glory, and it is so little our own that when he is pleased to have it we do well in resigning it to him, by whatever officer he accepts it, whether by angel, sickness, persecution, magistrate, or ourselves. Just be careful of this last lesson, in which Paul amasses and gathers together all his previous doctrine: “Glorify God in your body and in your spirit, for they are his” (I Cor. 6:20).

5. The text in Ephesians 4:15-16, “But let us follow the truth in love and in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ, until we are all come together into a perfect man,” has some affinity with this one. By this we receive the honor to be one body with Christ our head, which is afterward more expressly declared, “We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bone” (Eph. 5:30). Therefore, they say that to withdraw ourselves, who are the limbs of him, is not only homicide of ourselves, who cannot live without him, but a parricide towards him who is our common father.

However, as in fencing passion lays a man as open as unskillfulness, and a troubled desire to hit makes him not only miss but also receive a wound, so he who alleges this text overreaches to his own danger. For only this is taught here: all our growth and vegetation flows from our head, Christ, who has chosen for himself, to perfect his body, limbs proportional to it, and as a soul must live through all the body so it, and as a soul must live through all the body so must this care live and dwell in every part, always ready to do its proper function and also to succor those other parts for whose relief or sustenance it is framed and planted in the body. Thus no literal construction is to be admitted here, as though the body of Christ could be damaged by the removal of any man. As some leaves pass their natural course and season and fall again from the tree, being withered with age, and some fruits are gathered unripe and some ripe, and some branches that fall off in a storm are carried to the fire, so in this body of Christ, the church—I mean that which is visible—all these are also fulfilled and performed, and yet the body suffers no maims, much less the head any detriment.

This text, then, is so far from giving encouragement to any particular man to be careful of his own well-being as the expositors, of whatever persuasion in controverted points, take from the text an argument that, for establishing and sustaining the whole body, a man is bound to dismiss all concerns for himself and give his life to strengthen those who are weak. This text as a common fountainhead has afforded justification for martyrdoms, for visiting those under pestilence, and for all those desertions of ourselves and of our natural right of preserving ourselves that we heretofore had occasion to insist upon.

6. Just as that construction consists well with those words, so does it also with the words in the next chapter, “No man ever hated his own flesh but nourished it, etc.” (Eph. 5:2-9). Because we are to speak of this hate when we come to Christ’s commandment about hating our life, here we will only say with Marlorat on this text, “He does not hate his flesh who hates its desires and would subject it to the spirit, any more than a goldsmith hates the gold that he casts into a furnace to purify and reduce to a better fashion.”

Since I have not found that they take from the armory of scripture any more or better weapons than these, we may here end this distinction.

Distinction IV

1. In the next distinction our business is to test of what force and proof their arms are against their adversary forces. We shall oppose two kinds of them. The first are natural and assured subjects, reasons arising naturally from texts of scripture. The other, as auxiliaries, are examples. For although we do not rely upon them, still we have the advantage that our adversaries can neither use nor profit from examples! Therefore, the answer that both Peter Martyr and Lavater, borrowing from him, make— that we must not live by examples and that if examples proved anything they would have the stronger side (after all, there have been more men who have not killed themselves than who have done so—may well seem peremptory or lazy and the impossibility of a better defense may seem to be so alloyed as to be irrelevant. To prepare us for a right understanding and application of these texts from scripture, we must linger a while on the nature, degrees, and effects of charity, the mother and form of all virtue, which not only will lead us to heaven (for faith opens the door for us) but also will continue with us when we are there, when both faith and hope are spent and useless.

Nowhere will we find a better portrait of charity than the one Saint Augustine has drawn: she does not love that which should not be loved, and she does not neglect that which should be loved; she does not bestow more love upon that which deserves less love, nor does she equally love more and less worthiness; she does not bestow upon equal worthiness more and less love. To this charity the same blessed and happy Father apportions this growth. “Initiated, increased, grown great, and perfected—and the last is,” he says, “when in regard for it we hate this life.” Still, he acknowledges a higher charity than this one. For Peter the Lombard allows charity this growth: “Beginning, proficient, perfect, more perfect, and most perfect.” He cites Saint Augustine who calls it “Perfect charity to be ready to die for another.” But when he comes to that than which none can be greater, he says the apostle came “To desire to depart this life and be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23).

So, “One may love God with all his heart, and yet he may grow and love God more with all his heart, for the first was commanded in the law, and yet the counsel of perfection was given to him who said that he had fulfilled the first commandment.” Just as Saint Augustine found a degree above charity, which made a man ready to offer life, which is to desire to depart and be with Christ, so there is a degree above that, which is to do it.

This is the virtue by which martyrdom, which is not such in itself, becomes an act of highest perfection. This is the virtue too that assures any suffering that proceeds from it to be infallibly accompanied by the grace of God. Upon the assurance and testimony of a rectified conscience that we have a charitable purpose, let us consider how far we may adventure on the authority of scripture in this matter that we have in hand.

2. To begin with, look at the frame and working of Saint Paul’s argument to the Corinthians, “Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profits me nothing” (I Cor. 13:3). Two things seem evident. First, in a general notion and common reputation it was counted a high degree of perfection to die so, and therefore it was not counted against the law of nature. Second, by this exception, “without charity,” with love it might be done well and profitably.

As for the first, if anybody thinks the apostle here takes an example of an impossible thing, as when it is said, “If an angel from heaven teach another doctrine” (Gal. 1:8), he will, I believe, correct himself if he considers the foregoing verses and the apostle’s progress in his argument. In order to dignify charity the most that he can, he undervalues all other gifts, which there were ambitiously liked. As for eloquence, he says it is nothing to have all languages, even that of the angels (I Cor. 13:1). This is not put literally, since angels have no language, but to express a high degree of eloquence, as Calvin says on this point; or, according to Nicholas of Lyra, by language is meant the desire of communicating our ideas to one another. Then Paul adds that a knowledge of mysteries and prophesies, which also was much liked, is also nothing (I Cor. 13:2). The same for miraculous faith; it is also nothing.

The first of these gifts does not make a man better, for Balaam’s ass could speak (Num. 22:30) and still was an ass. The second gift Judas and the Pharisees had. The third gift is so small a matter that as much as a grain of mustard seed (Matt. 17:20) is enough to remove mountains. All these were feasible things and were sometimes done. After he had passed through the gifts of knowledge and the gifts of utterance, he presents the gifts of good works in the same stages. Therefore, he says, “If I feed the poor with all my goods” (I Cor. 13:3), which he presents as a harder thing than either of the others because in the others God gives to me but here I give to the other, yet as a thing possible to be done. Then he presents the last, “If I give my body,” as the hardest of all and yet, like all the rest, sometimes to be done.

What I observed as arising secondly from this argument was that with charity such a death might be acceptable. I know that the Donatists are said to have made this use of these words. Still, the intent and the aim condition every action and infuse the poison or the nourishment that those who follow suck from it. The Donatists rigorously and tyrannously racked and extorted so much from this text, in order to present themselves to others to be promiscuously killed, and if that were denied them they might kill themselves as well as those who refused to kill them. Still, I say, I do not doubt that so much may be gathered from this text as by these words, “If I give my body” (I Cor. 13:3), is implied rather more than a prompt and willing yielding of it when I am forced to do so by the persecuting magistrate.

These words will justify the deed of the martyr Nicephorus, being then in perfect charity. His case was this. Having some enmity with Sapricius, who was brought to the place where he was to receive the bloody crown of martyrdom, he fell down to Sapricius and begged from him a pardon of all former bitternesses. Sapricius, elated with the glory of martyrdom, refused him but was soon punished. His faith cooled and he lived. Nicephorus, standing by, stepped into his place and cried, “I am also a Christian,” and so provoked the magistrate to execute him, lest from the faintness of Sapricius the cause might have received a wound or a scorn. I take this to be a giving of his body.

Where there is a necessity to confirm weaker Christians it is very probable, as in this case, that a man may be bound to commit self- homicide. So there may be cases in which a very exemplary man before a prosecutor of cunning and subtle carriage can in no other way give his body for testimony to God’s truth, to which he may then be bound, except by doing it himself.

3. Since men naturally and customarily thought it good to die by self-homicide, and that such a death with charity was acceptable, so it is generally said by Christ, “The good shepherd gives his life for his sheep” (John 10:11). This is a justification and approval of our inclination to do so. For to say that the good do it is to say that they who do it are good!